damienh

Had a small window last night, but it didn't go to plan. Switched the setting from serial to ethernet and nothing broke immediately, so looked promising. Started the process of focusing the DSLR, as its the first time having iv attached and then everything crashed, think this was just due to Indi having a hiccup. Rebooted the Pi and the mount would fail to connect. Took me a while to realise it was due to switching to ethernet. Changed it back and connected again, but then the clouds came. Hoping tonight might be ok.

Thanks folks. Looks like clear skies tonight so will see how it goes. Will also capture some screenshots of settings while in use.

Cheers I will amend the serial setting. Doh. In of tracking that’s just because I had quickly put it together to get some screenshots. Interesting to see his point about the values shouldn’t be moving. I had assumed they would as it tracks. Clearly indicates it isn’t tracking. I wonder if I have to set tracking on again once I have synced.

Yeah I normally have ZWO camera selected but it wasn’t near so went for that option. I just wanted to try and get some quick screenshots of the eqmod settings. When you say scope specs is there anything in particular. I can check against when the normal camera is attached. Potentially this evening.

So the screenshot is just an example. I didn’t get screenshots when it was all connected the other night. Interesting about the values not changing. I had assumed they would as the mount follows the object through the sky.

I believe polar alignment is spot on. I will try next time to do it earlier on in the evening to guarantee it’s Polaris. Focal length is 360mm. I’d say you can start to nice it after a few seconds. Maybe an entire minute until it’s completely out of view. one thing I am wondering is once the telescope is attached. The dove tail bar is off to one side once locked so the telescope isn’t at the same position as the polar scope. It’s off by a few cm or so. Should I adjust for this?

I have 100% done that. But it does start drifting. Maybe I need to try more objects.

Sorry I should add that I have tried the above process without Polaris. I believe I did a star off from Polaris and then went to M81 and repeated. Is it the case I should do 2-4 objects and expected improved performance? In terms of polar alignment, I believe I am fairly spot on, having looked through polar scope and illuminator.

Hi folks, I believe I have a tracking issue with my EQ3 Pro mount which is being controlled in ekos and KStars. The mount is connected via a ethernet lynx cable to a Raspberry Pi 4 running Astroberry. Connection all seems ok. I have a Z61 and ASI224MC on the mount. All balanced correctly. My process in ekos/KStars is as follows: Polar align the mount Add the telescope and boot up the Pi Ensure location and time is correct Connect and start up Indi and check everything is connected. Unpark then mount and ensure tracking is on. Within the align module, select capture and solve on Polaris, with slew to target selected. This typically takes about 3-4 iterations and then it completes. I have it set to 30 accuracy and settle 2000. I then run capture and solve with sync selected. This is super quick. As far as I can see the mount is tracking. I can see the RA and DE values changing. I then go to another target and repeat the process. When I finally go to the capture module and start taking pictures, or view a live feed, I can see that the centred object starts to drift. If I leave it, within a minute or so the object is often completely out of view. I have to then run the align process again. I dont see any error or warning messages in the debug logs during this process to indicate any problems. Also worth noting that during the connection process I do see this warning in the logs "[WARNING] Can not load HorizonLimits Data File ~/.indi/HorizonData.txt: No such file or directory" Now I know I dont have a guide camera attached, so I cant expect pin point accuracy, however I would have thought the tracking behaviour would be somewhat better than this. I am in the process of getting a guiding camera and scope, but for now I would like to at least see if I am missing something regarding the above. I have quickly booted up the Pi and the mount this morning to capture some screenshots of my EQMOD settings to see if anyone can spot something obvious there. It only has simulator CCD set as my camera wasnt close when I set it up this morning. Any insights would be very much appreciated.

I have also been looking and have decided to go for the 130pds in terms of scope. I have been edging towards this bundle https://www.firstlightoptics.com/reflectors/skywatcher-explorer-130p-ds-eq3-pro-goto.html which is close to your budget.